Capital Ale House — Restaurant in Virginia

I picked this location to celebrate my birthday dinner yesterday evening with my parents and my husband. What a disappointing choice.

We were greeted and sat promptly. The waitress (Bree) brought us water and took our drink order, we asked for a few moments to review the menu as two members of the party had never been to Capital Ale before.

After taking our orders, we waited longer than usual for the food to arrive, but the location was pretty busy for Wednesday night - so understandable.

However, the waitress who brought us our plates (I never got her name), instead of walking a plate around to who ordered the meal (we were in a booth that was open on both sides), handed a very hot plate across the table to my mother, who almost dropped it due to how hot it was - and failed to warn her that it was hot and worst yet, didn't apologize for doing so. We had to ask her for silverware - as we still hadn't received it from when we were first sat. We also asked for ketchup and Heinz 57. She only brought us their ketchup and spicy ketchup. The Heinz 57 never made an appearance.

The food was, by far, the worst food I've ever had at a Capital Ale House. I was served their Grilled Flatbread Sandwich, which I've had before. The flatbread was burned on the inside (so you couldn't see it) and was barely warm. All the insides were smushed into the middle, so I basically just ate the inside of the sandwich and picked at my lukewarm fries. They served me all small end pieces of fries, I didn't have a single one larger than my pinkie finger. My husband had their Pulled Pork Sandwich and said it tasted weird and was far too wet with a sickeningly sweet sauce. My parents both were indifferent about their meals (Jägerschnitzel). We were only checked on once during our meal, nothing was said about my (or husband's) basically still full plates, and no refills were offered.

Our waitress brought us our bill and said to take our time paying - as she stood right next to my mother while she pulled out her glasses to review the bill before going to pay. She made no attempt to come back after a few minutes - just hovered until the bill was paid. Typically, waitstaff will give you a minute or two before returning to close a bill. Perhaps our waitress was new and is unaware of how that should be handled. Or maybe it was the end of her shift. Either way, it wasn't appreciated.

Overall, such a lackluster experience, that has landed Capital Ale House on the do-not-return list for our family. We'd been here for lunch before a month or so ago and had the best experience, so we expected dinner to be even more stellar. ...

My family has been to this Capital Ale House 4-5 times pre-pandemic and just made our first return visit since. All those previous visits were easily 5 star meals. Food was great, service was good, atmosphere was nice. Tonight however, was a very different experience.

Upon entering we were seated right away... however it took 15 minutes (being generous) before we had to flag down a hostess to get someone to wait on our table. And it’s not like we were alone in a corner. Four separate waiters took care of other guests around us and even patrons that arrived after us while we waited patiently. The waiter that eventually served us (had been waiting the table next to us and we were obviously in his section) told us that our lack of service was because the hostess hadn’t told him that we were there. Bald faced lie - this man had looked me in the eye while serving the other tables prior. And they had plenty of staff to cover the amount of customers that were present. Our waiter wasn’t unplesant by any means, but I hate being lied to.

So we finally get our food ordered. Appetizers came out fast, food was a little slow but not terribly slow. But... I take one bite into my mashed potatoes to find that their is a hair wedged under my potatoes. The waiter takes it away and has the meal re-made. The manager comps my meal and appetizer and even throws in a free desserts for the family. Pretty good compensation for the damages done, however I was there with a 3&1 yr old who aren’t easy to keep tame for the 1hr45min it took for us to walk in the door to the point we finally got the re-made meal in a to-go box and out the door. Time is the ultimate price I paid for these errors.

But wait, there’s more! My son took advantage of the free dessert and ordered a brownie w/ ice cream and we took it to go on account of both kids already beyond their limits of sitting still. As we get home, we unpack the dessert. The ice cream was served in a transperant container separate from the brownie BUT... it had started to melt some to reveal (you guessed it) another hair entangled in the ice cream.

I don’t know if this was just a bad night, as several other patrons seemed to have the same issues my family did that night, or if this is an issue with staffing from top to bottom. All I know is that the cumuluative effect of tonights experience is probably enough to make us never come back. A real travesty, because their Rouladen special was one of the best, authentic German meals I have had outside my late...

Capital Ale does a lot of good in the local community and I appreciate that fact. They sponsor numerous nonprofit events and support charitable organizations. That being said our dinner last night was a little less than stellar. We ordered drinks, a glass of wine and a draft beer which seemed to take an extraordinary long time to get to the table. Our kids sodas came quickly but our drinks lagged behind significantly. This would come back to haunt us later in our meal. My daughter ordered the french fries which had four different dipping sauces. These were outstanding and as I looked around many folks were ordering the same this appetizer being popular. My son ordered a cheeseburger which in appearance looked delicious however the fire too hot and burning the outside of the burger thus making it inedible for him. Again, his fries were outstanding. My wife's flatbread Margherita pizza was probably the most disappointing and that it was not a handmade crust, over-sauced, and under-cheesed, and that's coming from someone that likes more sauce on their pizza than cheese. There was no fresh basil or drizzled olive oil as described in the menu. I had the Thai shrimp tacos which were actually very good. My issue was that I ran out of beer after my first taco, order a beer and a glass of wine for my wife, waited as long as I could for the beer to arrive to help wash down the last taco but threw in the towel after about 10 or 15 minutes. I like beer but only as a part of a meal not a la carte. I was with my family and had a good time as we had great conversation a lot of laughing and shared experiences with each other. I was just a little saddened by the lack of attention to detail around the dinners and why the bar...